As her first semester as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences comes to an end, Virginia Sapiro is standing up for Boston University students and pushing for transparent discussions with the administration.
“I’m not afraid at being transparent, so you’ll find me active in that role,” Sapiro said in an interview.
The dean’s comments are unusual for a high-ranking administrator at BU, where red tape blocks access to offices from 1 Sherborn St. to 881 Commonwealth Ave. Sapiro’s ambitions also require officials’ cooperation.
“We’ll see if people are accepting of that,” said CAS Communications Director Bari Walsh. “I think there’s a way in which both sides have to be engaged in that process of openness.”
Although BU is often seen as a bureaucracy, Sapiro “has done a lot from the top down to change that culture,” Walsh said.
Since joining BU in July 2007 as the first female dean of CAS, Sapiro said she encountered unexpected roadblocks.
“I’ve realized how tight we are financially,” she said. “We’re in terrible need to refurbish CAS. I didn’t understand how severe our needs were.”
One of the first issues Sapiro wants to address in CAS is the lack of professors in certain departments. Last year, then-dean Jeffrey Henderson told The Daily Free Press that more professors were needed in the college’s biggest departments, including psychology, math, English, international relations, chemistry and biology.
Sapiro also said she wants to make the track easier for assistant professors to become tenured.
“We are planning how to cover classes for the next three to five years, given that we don’t have enough faculty,” she said. “Where are we most lacking professors? What classes are offered too rarely? Too often?”
Sapiro’s identification of a professor shortage is shared by President Robert Brown, who recently announced a plan to spend $1.8 billion on professors’ wages and new hires. Brown’s proposed plan would add 100 professors to CAS over the next 10 years.
During her first weeks on campus, Sapiro visited each CAS department to emphasize her availability to the faculty.
“I thought it was a really nice and wise way to begin,” said CAS anthropology chairman Robert Weller. “Over the course of the first semester . . . I have found her to be consistently available and consistently helpful.
“I was impressed with how she was able to hit the ground running, which is not easy coming into such a large and complex job,” Weller added.
Sapiro said she would also like to improve the CAS advising system, create a transitional program for freshmen, refurbish the building and expand the access students have to research, especially in social sciences and the humanities. As is the case with any improvements, these projects require funds that have not been available to the college.
From a student angle, Sapiro has connected with students and exchanged ideas over coffee, as well as a faculty forum chat Thursday at Mugar Memorial Library. Sapiro said undergraduates should recognize that college years are just as challenging as life beyond the Charles River Campus.
“People have made student life seem like it’s more of a bubble than it really is,” Sapiro said to a small group of students at Mugar. “My job is, in part, to think carefully with faculty, other administrators and students about how the institution connects with the so-called real world and how we prepare you for it.”
